Monday, April 10, 2017

Ask and Ye Shall Receive: Foodie Edition

I eat organic food, or I try to, anyhow. Whenever organics are available, and whenever finances allow, I opt for the good stuff (for reasons I'll leave the inquiring reader to research on their own).

However, even when organics aren't available ... they still are, sometimes. I'll explain.

One ordinary day, I was at a supermarket, stalking the produce department, when I had the thought: I'd like some onion with dinner. Then, immediately afterward: Do they carry organic onions here?

With that, I checked the nearby stall of bulk onions, and its sign, which would indicate an organic variety -- but no luck. Yet, rather than moving on (as would be logical), I approached the big, sprawling heap of non-organic onions, feeling illogically Compelled to do so.

Once there, my eyes were drawn to one particular onion in the spread. After looking closer, I stopped dead: this onion's label was different than the others.

It was an organic onion.

Ah, so they're organic but it's just not on the sign, was my initial thought. But, no: all the rest of the onions that I examined -- and I examined quite a few -- were definitely non-organic, as established clearly on their labels (which were patently unlike that on the organic odd-ball).

I double-checked the first, organic one I'd found: yep, definitely organic, as well as visibly different than its bin-mates, as to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

I combed the produce department, sure that there was another bin of onions somewhere, with the organic kindred of the castaway ... but, nope: no organic onions in sight.

Then, in the well-lit abundance of a supermarket produce section, I had a little reckoning: I'd not only found something in a place where that thing should not be, but I'd found it immediately after thinking of how I wanted just that thing (and doing so when I was out of viewing distance of that discovered thing, and because I'd had the genuine, independent, random desire for that thing to fill the gap in my dinner plans that night, as it were).

I'd not only found an organic onion in a store that didn't sell organic onions, I'd received that onion.

Once the synchroshock wore off and I'd rebooted myself, I returned to the store's singular bin of onions. After another check for more orphaned organics (which there weren't, from what I saw), I grabbed the miracle-onion. From what I remember, it was delicious.

* * *

Okay, I know what you're thinking (or what someone out there is thinking, no doubt): The organic onion just got mixed in with the others, probably during sorting in a shared warehouse. It was just a fluke, and you just got lucky.

Certainly a valid point, and a real possibility. Sure, it was awfully ironic that I'd Just Happen to be a man in need of an organic onion at that precise time, at that precise market (with the lone organic right on top of the wide, sprawling two-deep mound, and on the very side that I'd approached it on, no less) -- but, still, unlikely as it was, it could indeed have been chance, and I really mean that. And, yes, even when it's considered how that onion-needing man has experienced dozens upon dozens upon dozens of remarkably similar and equally unlikely such coincidences ... still, I can't 100% rule out that, indeed, I was just lucky enough to get what I wanted, when I happened to want it, and in a pretty cool way.

But then it happened again.

* * *

The scenario was almost identical: I was browsing a market's produce section when I was struck with the need to round out my dinner with a particular organic food -- and, lo and behold, I found one, despite the store not stocking an organic variety of that particular item. And, it again happened almost instantaneously, with mere seconds between my asking-thought and the food's discovery.

This time, it was an avocado rather than an onion, and in a smaller market, but otherwise, exactly the same: a lone, organic avocado in a great big bin of cheapie non-organics. Even the physical circumstances were the same: I had the thought, approached the bin immediately after, and there, right on top of the mound, directly in my line of sight, on my side of the wide sprawl, without my having to so much as shift my eyes, was my organic avocado. And, sure enough, a search of the store revealed no other organic avocados (there was another avocado bin, inside, but it too offered only non-organics).

So, for the record: not only did I experience the rather unlikely little windfall of getting that organic onion when I shouldn't have, but that same weird lightning struck twice (and, as it were, only four months later, when I've never otherwise seen organic produce in a non-organic bin, before or after).